Barnett Newman. The Stations of the Cross. Lema Sabachthani

From 1958 to 1966 Barnett Newman (1905-1970) created his work The Stations of the Cross – Lema Sabachthani, a cycle of fourteen canvas paintings, all 198 cm high and 152 cm wide. With The Stations of the Cross Newman undertook one of the most demanding assignments that the history of modern art has to offer, namely to thematize, without the use of colour but only in black and white, the tragedy of human existence vis-à-vis an almighty God and bring it to new pictorial form. In his text Franz Meyer takes up the question of the origins, the contents, the title and the portrayal form of these paintings that were first exhibited in 1966 in the Guggenheim Museum in New York. The delay in acknowledgement that Newman’s art suffered indicates the difficulty of understanding it, which is based on his work’s enigmatic and innovative aura. Frank Meyer succeeds in bringing the reader closer to the thematic content of this work. Antiquity and the Bible, the archetypal precedents for the authentically creative in occidental art, as well as the concept of the sublime and the tragic are, according to Franz Meyer, what lead to a comprehension of Newman’s paintings, that are among the most significant artistic achievements of Modernism.

Product Description

From 1958 to 1966 Barnett Newman (1905-1970) created his work The Stations of the Cross – Lema Sabachthani, a cycle of fourteen canvas paintings, all 198 cm high and 152 cm wide. With The Stations of the Cross Newman undertook one of the most demanding assignments that the history of modern art has to offer, namely to thematize, without the use of colour but only in black and white, the tragedy of human existence vis-à-vis an almighty God and bring it to new pictorial form. In his text Franz Meyer takes up the question of the origins, the contents, the title and the portrayal form of these paintings that were first exhibited in 1966 in the Guggenheim Museum in New York. The delay in acknowledgement that Newman’s art suffered indicates the difficulty of understanding it, which is based on his work’s enigmatic and innovative aura. Frank Meyer succeeds in bringing the reader closer to the thematic content of this work. Antiquity and the Bible, the archetypal precedents for the authentically creative in occidental art, as well as the concept of the sublime and the tragic are, according to Franz Meyer, what lead to a comprehension of Newman’s paintings, that are among the most significant artistic achievements of Modernism.